The Letter Keeper by Charles MartinMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Charles Martin is one of my favorite authors. This book, The Letter Keeper is the second in the series "A Murphy Shepherd Novel." The first book is titled The Water Keeper. Both books involved the sex-slave trade. Martin does a fantastic job revealing the horrific details but showing how the victims can be redeemed and live a life that is precious to the world. Below are just a few quotes from this awesome book:
Because the needs of the one outweigh those of the many. ~Bones (The Letter Keeper)
When light walks into a room, the darkness rolls back like a scroll. It has to. Darkness can’t stand light. And it has no counter for it. ~Bones (The Letter Keeper)
9-1 . . . 1-1 ~Bones (The Letter Keeper) (code for Ps. 91:11 “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”)
Years ago, I was working in Italy. I’d heard of Michelangelo’s David but never seen him. So I bought a ticket and walked down a long hallway lined with what look like half-finished sculptures. Huge square chunks of veined marble with forms of people being released. Works he never finished. I thought, What a shame. A waste. Then I turned a corner, and there he was. Towering. Perfection. It’s the first and only time I’ve ever looked at a piece of stone that took my breath away. The shards and slivers. No matter how long I sat and stared, I could not understand how human hands did that. How did Michelangelo know David was in there? Hidden in the rock. Spotless. No blemish. Just waiting for the sculptor’s hands to fling wide the prison doors.
Only one other time in my life have I felt this way. And the source of that awe you now hold in your hands.
From the moment we’re born, life chips away at us. With every hammer stroke, we watch in horror as the pieces that once made us fall to the ground. Soon we stand amid the rubble. The fragments. And we think to ourselves, I need that. I can’t leave that here. It was once a part of me. I’m no longer whole. I’ll never make it without it. So we spend much of our time chasing or collecting the pieces that break off, those that are stolen, or the ones we leave behind. Pretty soon, the pieces we carry are more than our hands can hold, so we throw a bag over our shoulder and stuff it full. Eventually a backpack. Before long, we’re reduced to vagabonds scouring the earth. Tormented by the fear that we’re incomplete, never whole until we find every single piece. Soon our pack is bigger than us and we’re bent over, inching along. A beast of burden walking under the crushing. Focused on what’s missing rather than what’s revealed.
But every now and then, one brave soul comes along and risks what the fearful won’t and never will. Despite the possibility of open rejection, abandonment, criticism, mockery, laughter, and shame, she lifts her pack off her shoulder, empties it before the world, and lets strangers sift through the pieces. Holding each by hand. Gemologists studying her imperfections under a magnifier. Every piece a word spoken.
When Michelangelo freed David from the cold marble cell that held him, the ground below the scaffolding was littered with pieces. Pieces that once made up the rock but not David. We know this because when finished, Michelangelo didn’t sweep all those discards into a pile only to hang them in a pack on David’s back. Why would he free him only to curse him through all eternity with carrying the marble walls of his own prison?
For reasons none of us understand, Casey has suffered the pain of the hammer and chisel, which makes her uniquely and singularly qualified to show the rest of us that we’re better off without all that deadweight. That despite the scars on the surface, there’s something beautiful, perfect, and without blemish just inches below.
Her majestic, powerful, soul-cleansing, pain-riddled, and triumphant words woven through a tapestry of sweet-soaked and tearstained pages are a masterful mosaic made up of all the broken pieces that mirror the whole. Stand too close and see only jagged rocks. But back up . . . and a giant killer emerges.
Casey Girl.
Writers are not like other people. We are the piece-keepers. We gather and guard. Holding fast throughout all eternity the discarded pieces that whisper the majesty and wonder of what is. What was. And the ever-elusive and exceedingly dangerous truth: what could be. We alone carry and share them. Carving pieces into letters that make up the words that heal us. And once they are carved, whether by hammer, chisel, or damp velvet cloth, we spill them selflessly across the earth’s table, where they walk the hurting from broken to not. From unable to breathe to laughing. From sickness of the soul to tears dripping off the corners of a smile. From lost to known and accepted in the knowing. This is the matchless and immeasurable power of our words. That’s what we do. We wander the earth. We unearth David. We slay giants. For we alone are the keepers of the letters that set us free. ~David Bishop (The Letter Keeper, this is the Forward to Casey’s book, The Resurrection of Casey Girl). Casey was rescued from sex salve trade.
1-1-8 . . . 1-7 ~Murph (The Letter Keeper) code for Ps. 119:17, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.”
And while evil can inflict wounds and lay claim to the territory of the human soul, it is a squatter. A trespasser. It has no legal deed. And it has no defense against love. It can’t touch it. Not now. Not ever. No weapon ever fashioned by man can defeat it, but what we pour from our hearts shatters it on the rocks of its own making. ~Murph (The Letter Keeper)
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